Sturgeon backs prof in row over infections
NICOLA Sturgeon yesterday insisted an adviser who said Scotland is at risk of a ‘stream of incoming infections’ because it is part of the UK was making a ‘legitimate’ point.
The First Minister defended Professor Devi Sridhar, who sparked outrage by suggesting that people from England and Wales were to blame for infecting Scots.
In an article for the New York Times, Professor Sridhar, who sits on the Scottish Government’s Covid-19 Advisory Group and is one of the architects of a slower exit from lockdown, blamed the problem on Scotland not having control of its borders. Asked about the comments yesterday, Miss Sturgeon said: ‘I haven’t read directly Devi’s article in the New York Times but I know the point she was making because she has made it regularly in the past.
‘It is a point that public health experts the world over are making – that as we get levels of this virus to very low levels domestically, the biggest risk – or a big risk – is importation from other countries.
‘That is a point that is being made from countries from New Zealand to throughout Europe to here in the UK, and that is why issues around border control are so important, it is why we have the quarantine regulations when we perceive a risk based on data from another country to be higher than it is domestically.
‘It is a really important and really valid and really legitimate public health point that she is making. And I do think those who try to read into politics or constitutional arguments are the ones doing a disservice here.’ She added some US states and Melbourne in Australia have introduced travel restrictions.
Professor Sridhar, 36, is chair of global public health at Edinburgh University. In her article, she wrote: ‘Scotland and Northern Ireland have looked ahead at the coming winter and made a concerted plan to minimise community transmission to avoid a serious resurgence of the virus by using the summer to drive cases as close to zero as possible and to reopen cautiously.
‘But neither nation has control over its borders because they are parts of the United Kingdom. So both now face a stream of incoming infections from England and Wales, which are behaving more like the rest of Europe, as well as from people returning from holidays abroad and not abiding by government advice to isolate for 14 days.’
Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said: ‘It’s news to me people from England and Wales were responsible for the outbreaks we have seen in Aberdeen, Orkney, Lanarkshire and Glasgow. It is unhelpful for Professor Sridhar to be feeding a divisive nationalist narrative.’
‘Unhelpful to feed divisive agenda’